Can Children with Special Needs Be Bilingual?

January 11, 2013

The other day I received a note from someone who has a child with special needs and was wondering about bilingualism for his family. Because my personal experience in this area is limited, I thought I would search out some expert opinions and bring them together for this post. I hope these resources will be of some support to those raising kids with special needs.

First, a fine video from LinguaHealth with Dr. Brenda Gorman, a speech-language pathologist in the United States.

“Parents of special needs children including those with Down syndrome are frequently counseled away from bilingualism without the benefit of research to show how capable they actually can be. Ours is the first group study that documented that children with Down syndrome can become bilingual. There is no evidence in our study to suggest input should be restricted to a single language. In fact, these children can do very well in acquiring two languages.” —Elizabeth Kay-Raining Bird

Olga Mecking describes the potential impact of Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) on a child learning multiple languages in a thoughtful piece at The European Mama.Raising Multilingual Children with SPD

And finally, to exchange experiences and support with other parents, visit The Bilingual Zoo. This is a warm, lively forum for “keepers” of bilingual kids.The Bilingual Zoo

How about you? Are you familiar with other pertinent resources for children with special needs? Please add them below!

Hello Adam,
I do not have special resources about that but some experience as I have children bilinguals and one of them who is a bit different.
I am sure that bilingualism in case of disabilities is a gift as it will increase the ability to communicate, to be more flexible about language and understanding.
cyrille

Cyrille, thank you for your comment. I absolutely agree with your thoughtful perspective. Yes, bilingualism is a great gift and we have the power to help give that gift to our children. Best wishes to you and your family.

Paula, I really appreciate you letting me know about your article. It’s terrific and I added it to the list of resources above. I hope other families who have children with autism will find your article and follow your wise example. All the best to you and your daughter!

And from my own experience, my oldest daughter was diagnosed with dyspraxia when she was 2, which is a speech and motor skills processing disorder. We never once questioned her bilingualism or our commitment to it, not even when a speech therapist told us to only speak to her in English to help her English along (as she spoke very late and had trouble even in English). We luckily knew enough to ignore her poor advice! And now (four years later) she has almost no speech difficulties and is learning her third language.

Thank you, Adam for this article! My girls both have Sensory Processing Disorder, which affects their language learning in different ways. My oldest started speaking later and her speech was not always clear. We continued to speak our languages to her and sent her to a Dutch daycare. Of course we were told that she didn’t speak enough Dutch (or German, from my parents-in-law), that it was because of her multilingualism, and that we should take her to additional Dutch classes. Of course, we didn’t, because we knew more Dutch was NOT what she needed. She is now 3,5 and is learning vocabulary and grammar at a pace she didn’t have as a baby. Her Polish and German both got better (with German being her primary language), as did her Dutch. My younger daughter is almost 2 years old, and she is not walking by herself – while she was much quicker to talk than her big sister. I can see how her wanting to learn to walk affects her speech – she is quiet for large amounts of time because she concentrates on walking. In some children with SPD, even simple activities can cost vast amounts of energy…but she is learning all 3 languages as well, and is quick and eager to learn to talk. I also have SPD and have learned 5 languages myself. Here’s my article about it – while SPD is not a recognised disorder, and it’s hard to explain, to me it seems real, and explains many of the problems I’ve been having: http://www.europeanmama.eu/2012/12/raising-multilingual-children-with-spd.html

Fantastic list of resources here! I have written a post on our website redirecting our readers here; but I wonder if you would also be happy for me to reproduce this list in our “resources” folder?
Best,
Gaby from Bilingualism Matters at the University of Edinburgh

When my autistic daughter was 4 we went to Early Intervention for her communication issues. My daughter was very hesitant at first and needed a lot of encouragement from me. Her therapist then asked me to help by only speaking ML with my daughter during therapy (until then I only spoke ml with my daughter).

I decided to show my good will and gave it a try.

The result was that my daughter was so shaken by the fact that I suddenly spoke the “wrong” language with her that from then on she would only interact with the therapist at sessions, since the therapists language choice at least made sense to her.

So the experiment was a success, even if not in the way the therapist had expected.

My daughter is now fully bilingual, even if she still struggles with expressing herself, particularly in emotional situations. My other children never had any problems with bilingualism or speech in general.

I’m really pleased to hear that your daughter succeeded in becoming fluently bilingual. I hope that our son can achieve the same goal. Our experience as a family with being pressured to go monolingual made me want to reach out to other parents to let them know that current scientific understanding does not support such a decision. As a consequence of this I joined a research group on multilingualism and ASD. Our website is here: https://eugene-ryan-2i8u.squarespace.com/about

My goal is still to reach out to other parents, to share experiences, knowledge and the latest research. I don’t wish to push, but I would be really interested to hear about your family’s journey. Anyway, all the best and good luck for you and your family in the future.

Hi there. I am a mum raising bilingual boys. We live in Holland, dad is Dutch and I am English. We use the OPOL approach. My oldest boy has ASD. I have written about this previously. It is good to see more information coming. I spoke with Jim Cummins about the lack of research. We were advised to bring our son up monolingually. I am very glad I ignored the advise. Here is a link to my story.